Democrats in Wyoming are
in position to make huge gains in this election cycle. We have a
democratic governor who won by a 40% margin in the 2006 election.
We also have a congressional candidate who lost in '06 by about 1,000 votes
and who has already scared the republican incumbent out of the '08 election.
We have funding at historical levels and for the first time have hired
regional field staff and are actively recruiting candidates to run in every
corner of the state. While we are lagging behind the democratic parties
in some of our neighboring states, we are following their lead and will
join the resurgence of the Democratic Party in the Rocky Mountain West.

All of this progress will
be completely reversed if Hillary Clinton is our party's presidential nominee.
For reasons I don't agree with and don't completely understand, most voters
in Wyoming seem to hate Hillary Clinton. This is in part due to the perception
of her as being someone who supports big government, most notably through
a federal government takeover of the health care system. She is also paying
a heavy price for the sins of her husband.

If Barack Obama is the democratic presidential nominee, we will be the
party of new ideas that understands that a united America will be much
better able to address the serious problems facing our country than a divided
America. If Hillary Clinton is our party's nominee, every democratic candidate
in Wyoming will be painted with that same liberal, big government brush.
We will also be the target of the locker room jokes that rightfully belong
to Bill Clinton.

Some people feel that the
basis of this argument is really that we can't support Mrs. Clinton because
she is a woman. This is simply not true. Wyoming has a long history of
supporting women in government and politics. Wyoming was the first government
in the history of the world to grant equal voting rights to women. We had
the first woman public elected official (Esther Hobart Morris) and the
first woman elected governor in the country (Nellie Tayloe Ross). Our opposition
to Hillary Clinton is not based on her being a woman, it is based on the
fact that her nomination will kill the chances of many democratic candidates
around the state.

While I don't agree with
this view of Mrs. Clinton, I have to accept that this is the truth. It
has become the dirty little secret in the Democratic Party. My fears for
the Wyoming Democratic Party are shared by some party leaders throughout
the Rocky Mountain West. This region is vitally important to the growth
of the national party. While we continue to lose ground in the south,
democrats have made huge gains in the west. Not long ago, republicans held
the governors' offices in all eight Rocky Mountain states. Democrats now
hold five out of eight. Westerners have an independent, libertarian spirit
and democrats here can make republicans pay a heavy price for years of
pandering to the social conservatives. None of this will happen if Hillary
wins the nomination.